Some Notes on a Wednesday Afternoon

I forgot to commemorate the first anniversary of Super Duper Day (note: official title still being discussed) yesterday, Dec. 4. SDD was the day when Kat and I officially became engaged by choosing the most inexpensive ring she liked and was simultaneously the same day when I got my first acceptance to a law school. Kat cried tears of joy on SDD. Normally, I make her cry tears of anger or disappointment three or four times for each instance of tears of joy. But we choose not to commemorate those occurrences with special days. Anyway, I hope to remember SDD next year without having Kat tell me right before I go to bed.

Since things always seem to come full circle, I had my first law school exam today (post-SDD). The first rule (or is it the second rule?) of law school exams is "You don't talk about law school exams!" So I won't be discussing it with you. I'll tell you how I feel after being prejudiced by finding out my grade. (Don't tell anyone I said anything, but I think I did OK. If not, I will be savagely disappointed later).

Though I didn't feel horrible after the exam, I was pretty drained. I felt like Hank Kingsley after he filled in for one night as host for Larry Sanders. Right after the show, this was Hank's quote:

"Man, I'm tired. Now, I know why Larry is so f---ed up!"

That is sort of how I felt. Hat tip to Lloyd for the Larry Sanders DVDs, which are always a good study break/procrastinating tool.

But while I thought things were going so well, this was the e-mail I received after I had finished only my first of four exams. And this is quoted verbatim, however, I will not divulge the author's name:

"Let's face it. You haven't done enough to get an A in the class you'll be
studying for on Friday. So just accept your fate and embrace the B and play
basketball."

Hold on, here! I haven't given up that easily. I think I have worked hard enough, but sure I'll be there for basketball. I've got to keep my priorities straight!

I don't have much more to say. Kat bought Lily a rather awesome sweater. The Suns and Celtics are winning. But sports are meaningless, law is everything, bring on the exams!

A chicken in every pot, an exclamation point in every paragraph

I haven't talked at you in a bit (we haven't missed you! they say), so here is what has been going on.

I have a lot of studying to do, but I'm hopeful that things will work out well. I will be finished with this semester is exactly one month. Then the real worrying can begin!

Here is one (only one?!?) thing I've learned: The law is a seamless web.

Kat redecorated the living room! It looks pretty impressive. I think she is going to update her blog with some pictures, but if she doesn't, I'll add one to this post. Here's what you need to know: zebra print Chinese lanterns, bamboo sticks, and a pretty red curtain. Put it all together and it achieves Kat's goal of making the living room look, in her words, "opium dennish." Note: the living room is not actually an opium den. It's not really a living room either since we live in all the rooms.

I've been listening to the latest New Pornographers album "Challengers." It has been out for awhile, but it only recently was put on eMusic. I think it is worth a listen. Much love for Challengers, Go Places, Myriad Harbour and Unguided!

Kat and I went to the Tucson Museum of Art today. There was an arts and crafts fair, and admission was free - although we are actually museum members because we are so cultured!

It is still quite warm here! There might be something to this.

Kat and I went from sports bar to sports bar in an attempt to find one that had NBA TV, so I could take in the Celtics-Magic tilt. I hadn't seen the Celtics since their reincarnation, so I had to take the last chance I would probably have in awhile. First, I forgot when the game started and then we couldn't find a place that showed it. By the time we found a place that actually had it, it was the middle of the third quarter. The C's had been 8-0 in games I hadn't watched any part of. Now, they are 0-1 in games I have seen part of! So I will take the blame. Although I should enjoy seeing a Boston team lose considering recent events in sports, I wanted to see the C's play well and win. I don't know how good they can be, but to my mind, anything less than an Eastern Conference title would be a failure. I knew when I came to law school that trying not to pay attention to the Suns would be difficult, but I was not counting on a Celtics revival. Oh well, I'm glad to see them win because it has been a long time coming.

That's all! Take care.

Things Jangling Around (Now Updated with Pictures!)

I've had roughly 34 mini-nervous breakdowns in the past three months, so after today's most recent descent into the depths of depression, Kat told me to take the night off from studying. I'm trying to do that by blogging with you. I had a plan for a great blog with great photos, but alas, neither of our digital cameras have batteries. However, I do have plans to update this post with the photos when I get them, so stay tuned for that!

First, through some sort of foreign pet exchange program, Kat and I are caring for a 3-pound pomeranian/chihuahua named Lola (yes, we currently have Lola, Lily and Lucy .... Lucky, laren't lee?). Lola might be the cutest dog in recorded human history, and strangely, she likes me more than Kat. She hangs out in the office where I study and enjoys peeing on the floor even though she has a piddle pad right nearby! Lola's owner talks to her in Spanish, so it requires a subtly different inflection on "No" when telling her "No." This is very important. Lucy and Lily were initially quite resistant but are now playing nice with Lola - regularly chasing her so she has to hide under the bed where no other dogs can get to her.

(insert photo of Lola)


(caption: In the immortal words of Walter Sobchak, "You can't board it. It gets upset, it's hair falls out!")

Second, another new arrival is Kat's ridiculously awesome new iMac with 20-inch screen, loaded with Leopard and her new copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3. (I do not know the actual meanings of the words I am typing). It is a sweet machine and is Kat's most recent step toward taking over the world through cute designs. I'm excited that she now has the tools to really do some great stuff.

(insert photo of computer)



(caption: Now we have Garage Band. Maybe Keith's death grip on the means of Gaucast production has come to an end. Workers unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!)

Third, I bought a new "Arizona Law" T-shirt that is being sold by the Student Bar Association, of which I am a member. I also got Kat a nice blue tank top. If anyone wishes to place an order, they can contact me, and I can get one for them, maybe as a Christmas gift. Note, since this is a gift promise, it cannot be enforced in a court of law and I can choose not to perform for any reason. I learned this in Contracts class.

(insert photo of shirt)

(caption: These shirts are also available in a modest gray.)

Fourth, I was over at the home of one of Kat's co-workers this week, and for the first time, I saw up close as people played Guitar Hero. I was not impressed. However, Kat and I thought a similar game we called "Cowbell Hero" would be a bigger hit with us. I suggested Sitar Hero, which is another game we are considering developing. I know it has been said many times many times before, but I'll say it anyway: "Why wouldn't you just buy a guitar?"

(insert photo of Guitar Hero or Heroine focused intensely as he or she tries to imagineer his or her way through "Barracuda" by Heart. Note, that's by the band Heart, not the colloquial "by heart," meaning without the aid of sheet music, because the game tells you exactly what buttons to push and even when to "whammy" the "whammy bar." In other news, I think life is empty and existence is a joke.)
(caption: "No, kind sir, I am not interested in playing you in Guitar Hero.")

I think that's everything. Thanks for stopping by.

Most Confusing Week Yet

This was the most confusing week so far, but it wasn't because of the material we were studying. I've fallen into a groove where no matter how strange or counterintuitive a concept is, I seem to be able to get at least a moderate grasp on it. I don't know if I'm getting them well enough to be a lawyer, but we'll find out preliminarily in two months and then henceforth for the rest of my working life.

One of the students in my small section (the group of 25 or so who are in all the same classes together, including one class every day that consists of only our section) died this week, apparently of suicide. We don't have any detailed information, but that is what we were told. For all of us, this was an unbelievable shock. I knew this guy relatively well - I had studied at the same table with him on a couple of occasions, had lunch with him, even played basketball with him once. He spoke in class, was prepared on a daily basis and always had something funny to say. Knowing all of this, it has been totally impossible to make sense of how this could happen.

Most of us can't help but think that we could have done more or been better classmates and that maybe this could have made a difference. I know that it probably couldn't, and I also know that school probably had very little to do with this. It is a high-stress environment, but we haven't even really hit the stress yet.

I don't think there is really a lesson here because it makes so little sense. I have not had trouble focusing on my studies or had feelings like I don't want to do it. I am excited to be doing what I'm doing, and even when it's hard it hasn't gotten me down too much. In a perverse way, the events of this week have shown me just how lucky I am. I just want to keep moving forward and try to achieve my goals. But for now, that journey is pretty sad.

I regularly poke fun at Mom (with Kat often telling me not to in the background) about going to so many funerals. But when something affects you like this, I understand that you want to be able to say goodbye. So I'll be at a funeral on Monday (I don't know what the odds are that Mom will be at one as well, somewhere, but I think they have to be decent).

I don't know what this post is supposed to convey, but I felt the need to try to get some things down. In the end, this incident can't ever make sense to those of us who knew him only at school. But can any suicides of 22-year-olds ever make sense? Probably not. And I wish I didn't have to try.

In better news this week, on Tuesday Kat and I went to the Rilo Kiley show at the Rialto. It was quite awesome. All the best tunes from the past albums and the best ones off the new album as well. Best moment of the night: Jenny Lewis vamping along the front of the stage while playing cowbell on "Breakin' Up." Also, the supporting acts The Bird and the Bee and Grand Ole Party were good. You can hear them on iTunes (Kat had to download a few), but I couldn't find them on eMusic.

Other good news, I got all of my reading done for this weekend before the weekend, so I can outline all day today (Saturday). It should be a barrel of fun.

Last good news, Kat and I are going to Phoenix tomorrow to see our friend Tammy. She is moving soon to Reno where she and her fiance, Chris, have gotten jobs. They both worked with us previously in Yuma. We'll miss having a good friend in Phoenix (always helpful to save on parking at the airport during vacation!), but we're excited for her and Chris.

Also bonus last good news, we might go to the Arizona State Fair while in Phoenix. I think there is a chance we can procure and consume a candy-bar drizzled with caramel on a stick deep-fried in lard and honey and then stuffed inside a giant marshmallow, microwaved and then coated with other candy bars. If not that, then a funnel cake is always good!

Obscure Film Review

Netflix allows me to see movies I have never even heard of. Sometimes this is a good thing. While others times I hadn't heard of the film for a good reason: it wasn't very good. Today's review of a movie I had never heard of before last week is of "The King of Comedy," the least well-known of the Martin Scorsese-Robert De Niro collaborations.

The film came out in 1983 - I was 2 - and is about Rupert Pupkin (De Niro) an aspiring comedian with an unhealthy fixation on late-night host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis). "King" borrows a bit from Psycho (Pupkin has recreated a set like Langford's in his mother's basement, though it appears his mother is still alive, not a skeleton). In fact, it could be alleged that Seinfeld ripped this film off in the "Merv Griffin Show" episode, but we'll have to save that for another day. Along with Psycho, the film follows the plotlines of many other "perverse fascination/assassination" films where a celebrity is abducted or murdered. After many attempts to have Langford listen to his audition tape, De Niro, who is only somewhat convincing as a down-on-his-luck geek, ends up abducting Lewis and holding him hostage with his release depending on De Niro being able to do his act on that night's show. De Niro does his predictably laughless act (I was born in Clifton, NJ - before that was a federal offense!) and then is arrested. In the interim, a crazy Sandra Bernhard acts crazily crazy in front of her love object Lewis. For this role, it was perfect casting.

De Niro is sent to prison, but when he gets out, he has a bestselling book, lots of comedy work and his face is known worldwide. And while every director whose film doesn't break the box office takes the time in the making-of DVD featurette to say the movie was "ahead of its time" - in this case, when Scorsese says it (and he does, let there be no doubt), it's actually true. Seeing this movie now makes a lot more sense to me than I think it would have to someone my age in 1983. The focus on celebrity is ubiquitous (or at least it seems like it is when you get three channels and they are always showing ET, Access Hollywood or the Emmys).

While movie watchers in 1983 may have been simply disturbed or bored by Rupert Pupkin (Scorsese said Entertainment Weekly called the movie the biggest flop of the year at the time), I think today's celebrity-soaked sycophants would be pulling for him. Pupkin gets his 900 seconds of notoriety (avoid cliches like the plague...whoops!), and I can't help but feel that lots of people would trade places with him, including the stint in prison.

I don't know what this means for me, you, our society, etc. Maybe we aren't better off than we were in 1983, that simpler time of almost a quarter century ago. But I know one thing: DVDs and Netflix didn't exist then, so this conversation probably wouldn't be happening. So although I have to put up with the Britney guy, Mike Patrick, Mike Gundy and sneezing pandas, I don't mind. I'll get by.

Quick obscure film side note: I was reading a book that mentioned a 1978 film called "The Big Fix" starring Richard Dreyfuss. I wish it were on DVD because I've heard it's good. But alas, it is not. I was wondering if some of my...ahem...older readers had possibly seen this film or were aware of it at the time. The book I was reading that mentioned the film excerpted a great line in which Dreyfuss, playing Private Investigator Moses Wine is asked why his arm is broken. His reply is priceless:

"You know, a couple of cops hassling a black kid."

Heavy Thunderstorm Edition

We are in the midst of quite a storm tonight in Tucson. The windows have been rattling with the booms of thunder and the lightning has been quite impressive. I feel as though I'm being transported back to my youth in Nebraska when loud thunderstorms often kept me awake at night. Back then, I thought that every storm meant there would be a tornado, and thus, I think I bothered my parents quite a bit. I always wanted to sleep downstairs, even though they knew there was really no danger. They were nice enough to let me do that (or even crawl in with them when I was really small). Living with a poodle that likes nothing better than to sleep right on top of you every night has taught me what a large sacrifice my parents were willing to make. I still very much appreciate it, though I'm glad I don't have those same fears anymore.

I have new and different fears, but they seem much more easy to deal with than storms I had no control over. Thinking back to one's childhood can make that past life seem very simple or very complicated. It can do the same for one's adult life as well. Life as a 6-year-old may have seemed like a piece of cake, but I had a lot about which to be irrationally afraid. These days I have a lot to be irrationally afraid about as well - the difference is that now I know it is irrational. That is a piece of wisdom which I must regularly remind myself. I guess it is nothing more than the trope that "it's all small stuff."

But I know for certain that bolts of lightning that lit up my walls adorned with sports stars and loud thunderclaps that had me covering my ears did not feel like small stuff. That's when you need people you can turn to. In that room where I would bother my parents on stormy nights, there was a message on the wall that said something about giving two things to your children: "the first is roots, the last wings." I can recall reading that as a child and not really understanding it - I think for a while I thought when I grew up I'd literally be able to fly. But when I think back on it now with a better understanding of what it means, I have to thank my parents for doing just that.

I realize that this has come off as equal parts Prairie Home Companion and back-to-school special, but I can't really help it. I once had a discussion with my dad about whether Garrison Keillor was actually funny or simply had a better memory than every Midwesterner. My dad said he was funny, while I felt that he could just remember the names of long-forgotten toys and grocery items so well that listeners simply remembered the humor of their own childhood.

But like many things, I find now that I was wrong. When I think about home, I can remember every single thing that was hung on the walls and every single piled box in the garage. I don't know what it is like now, but I can tell you exactly how it was then. And if Garrison Keillor could tell me a story that reminded me about being afraid of tornadoes, drinking cranberry juice, being trapped with friends in our house without electricity and without parents, or watching the 49ers in the Super Bowl, I'd laugh, too.

If I wasn't crying.

(Sorry about that. I don't really know where all that came from, but I felt like it was somewhat real, so I'm leaving it. I'll probably regret it, but it's OK. I'll have my regularly scheduled nonsense soon. Here is a link, via The Basketball Jones, that I am currently enjoying.)

Sunday Night is Blogging Night in America

I've been told that keeping a journal during law school is a good idea. I haven't been doing it - but then again, I haven't been following much of the advice I've been given. To follow more than half of it is impossible because most of it is contradictory. However, I was hoping that every Sunday night I could blog about law school. Maybe I won't be quite as open as I would be if no one could read it, but since the readership of this blog isn't exactly in the hundreds, I'll probably be fine.

So far my routine every Sunday night has been to
1. shave for the only time I will all week
2. burn my entire library of law school-related documents (assignments, notes, powerpoints, etc.) to a CD to prepare for either my laptop freezing, being broken or being stolen and
3. worry obsessively about the coming week.
I have no plans to change this procedure, although I threw in a step 2.5 tonight with a haircut, thanks to Kat's fine work with a pair of scissors.

I have my usual fear, but I have fallen into a bit of a routine when it comes to school. In part, this causes me apprehension (the imminence of which is an element for the civil tort of assault!) because I don't want it to get so comfortable that I forget that I'm not actually learning everything I should. But on the other hand (as we're always taught to consider in law school), it doesn't help the learning process to be on edge every single day.
But I don't think the anxiety will probably ever go away for me. In each class there is only one graded assignment - the exam at the end. So you can never know how you are doing until you really find out how you did. But it is the same situation for everybody, so there is really no reason to complain. I think everything will be fine, but confidence isn't my strong suit.

However, I'll close with two good things in an attempt to lighten the mood.
1. I was chosen as one of two Student Bar Association representatives for my section of the class. This was a good thing.
2. I found some law students with whom to play basketball every Friday. This is also a good thing.

In closing, I don't think this post was helpful to anyone probably. If you think I should do the law school kvetching in a private notebook and save the blog for talking about Ed Hochuli's prodigious guns or other sports minutiae feel free to let me know. Or if you like the pallor that this post has thrown over the entire enterprise feel free to let me know that, too.
OK, I hope to see you in a week.